Contact lists (sometimes referred to as “buddy lists”) include details of other parties available for contact by a user of a computer system. The user can select a member of the list and initiate communication with that list member, usually by operation of communications software such as an email client, an instant messaging (IM) client, or voice or video telephony software, or by an interface between the computer and an external piece of communications equipment, such as an external telephone driven by computer telephony integration (CTI) commands from the computer, which causes the external telephone to dial a supplied contact telephone number based on the information in the contact list.
The use of contact lists makes it easier for a user of a computer system to easily and seamlessly initiate contact with third parties, avoiding the necessity of remembering or looking up the contact details of the third party and entering those details into a communications application. Contact lists can be integrated into communications applications such as email, IM or telephony software, or they can be stored in a stand-alone application which manages and interacts with the email, IM or telephony software resident on the user's computer system. It is to be understood that a computer system can be a single computer or can be a distributed system in which different components and different pieces of software are physically separated on different machines.
It is known to employ server-based contact lists which are accessed by client software. The client software typically downloads either a personalised or a generic contact list from the server. Such client-server systems are preferable within large organisations as they allow resources to be concentrated, and allow contact details to be maintained and updated centrally. Users can personalise their own lists by adding members to or removing members from the list to be displayed on their own client application, and the server-based component can store one or more such personalised lists for each user.
Contact lists can also be integrated with a presence service which keeps track of the location, availability and current contact parameters of its users. As an example of a presence service, the session initiation protocol (SIP), widely used in voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony, can be employed as described in Request for Comments No. 3856 issued by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF RFC 3856), which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Within contact centers (or call centers) such contact lists are employed to permit the agents who communicate with customers to enlist the assistance of colleagues, supervisors or outside experts. By deploying contact lists to contact center agents within their workstation environment, and thereby providing the agents with access to such expertise, the agents can more readily and easily handle problems presented by the customers with whom they are in communication.
A drawback of current systems is that the default list of contacts presented to the agent, or even the agent's own personalised list, may not provide access to the best expertise which is actually available to deal with a current problem faced by an agent. This is particularly true where an agent has to cover a broad range of queries, or where a customer interaction covers several areas, or where an agent is required to handle an issue outside of her normal experience (since in such cases the agent's usual sources of help may be equally ill-equipped to help). Agents may not know who to ask for help if they are not familiar with the expertise of all available potential contacts.